Long John Announced! Begins June 24th!

My name is D. Bethel (“Dan” to my friends) and I’m the writer/artist of what will be a strange noir/action/existential look at a western.

I have no idea who is coming to my site, which is always an exciting feeling. Some of you may be fans from the previous comic, Eben07, that I created and wrote with Eben Burgoon as well as handled all the art duties. I’d like to let those people know that Long John will be a little different from Eben07, a janitorial espionage action-humor webcomic (still on the web with over six years of content…go check it out, too!). Long John does have a bit of an absurd premise, but it’s being played completely straight and earnest. Just like any good story, there will be humorous moments mixed in with the serious stuff, but its more about telling this mystery-revenge story rather than trying to make you laugh. But, if you liked my art and general visual storytelling tactics from before, you’ll feel right at home with this new comic.

Others may be brand new to me or my comics, and I welcome you, too! If you’re a western fan, this comic combines all the stuff I love about westerns with the stuff I’ve always wanted to see in a western, mixing good, old-fashioned gunslinging with some serious character development–and some interesting twists along the way. If you’re a fan of comics in general, I hope that when this updates you’ll add it to your reading list (and RSS feed when I get that up and running).

With that in mind, this website is still very much a work-in-progress. I’ll be continually adding features to it and sprucing it up as I can, but I am a writer and artist with basically no aptitude nor talent for designing and programming things for the web.

So…why am I announcing this now? To build buzz for the 24th. I want as many people to show up on that first day and, more importantly, to know that first day is coming.

To keep interest going, I’ll be doing weekly blog posts (minimum!) on Tuesdays here on the site to give you some insight into the process of creating a brand new comic as well as to let you know about any updates to the site. Just to let you know, I have started up a new weekly nerd news & discussion podcast with my friend, Andrew, called A Podcast [ , ] For All Intents and Purposes that you can check out and subscribe to (it’s on iTunes, too!).

To tide you over until the 24th, I assembled a little preview image from a few different pages in the first chapter. Welcome to Long John everybody!